Comments on the race of life.

Sex education in school

This Furlong is seventy-two. I had absolutely no sex education. None. I learned garbled facts from my friends. Seventy or so years ago, the world was a completely different place. Sex wasn’t talked about, commonly. It was a hidden thing that women endured and men desired. It was a commodity women exchanged for marriage. There was no easy-access porn, masturbation caused insanity, and sex was dirty stuff.

In early Victorian times, the age of consent was eight. Then it got raised to twelve. Then it got raised to sixteen.

In the “old days” child abuse existed, just as it does now. Eight year old child abuse repulses us, twelve-year-old child abuse repulses us. Sixteen year old child abuse sparks pedophilia charges, and we are shocked at the behaviour of men.

Women – my hated New Feminists – point out that the problem is with MEN.

Nowadays, our attitudes to sex have changed – its in-your-face easy to learn about it – but again, just like it was for me, if you are young, it’s from a place of ignorance and from a menu of very questionable stuff.

There is the internet. Porn is available at the click of a mouse. It doesn’t ask you how old you are before it opens before your eyes. Mobile phones go online. They have cameras. We can snap pics of bits of us we can’t even see ourselves! There is sexting. There is social media. There is still the problem of pedophilia. And online child sex.

Our whole world is different. Different! Not even parents can keep ahead of it. And no one REALLY knows what their kids are experiencing.